Following high praise received, not least in the form of three awards won at the Golden Globes over the weekend, someone from the Talent Management team simply had to see The Artist for themselves. Damian O’Connor, Managing Director of Talent Management, is a keen film buff and regular visitor to the cinema, and as such was excited to be first in line to catch this much talked about production. The rest of us eagerly awaited his experienced opinion on the latest flick to cause a stir in the office as he left the building full of cheerful anticipation last week. However, his reaction to the film on his return this morning was not what any of us, himself included, had expected!

“Con artist more like!” Was his response when the writing team asked how he had enjoyed the film. In fact, Damian appeared so disillusioned by what he had seen that we asked him to sum up his viewing experience for us to share with you. We have decided to add his comments to the Talent Management blog in an effort to pre-warn any film enthusiasts who may be intending to view The Artist based on reviews they have read – which may, it seems, may be way out of perspective with what the film is actually able to deliver.

“When it comes to evaluating films I put everything together; story, camera work, screenplay, dialogue, acting, story line, editing and entertainment value”, explains Damian O’Connor. “By filtering all that down I can arrive at an ‘out of ten’ figure. The Artist lurks in the monochrome gloom, scoring one out of ten.”

On what basis we wondered?

“Naive story line, predictably boring plot, ‘chocolate box’ exaggerated acting, deafening and chaotic soundtrack, pathetic and moronic, pencil moustached, ‘poor me’ matinee idol and an anti climax equal to some sort of illusionary media deception somewhere along the line.”

Low score

“My usual lowest score is 3/10, one for the actors turning up, one for colour and the other for sound, in this pathetic case, two out of three didn’t exist, no colour and no sound….big yawn. In scoring The Artist – as there was neither colour or dialogue – unless one has never seen a well trained ‘Parson Terrier’ – or a moving human, projected in monochrome onto a flickering screen – I can see no reason why anyone would want to sit through this humourless panto style fiasco for a painful 100 minutes.”

Awards

“The Artist is total drivel and yet somehow it gets mentioned in the same breath as ‘Golden Globes’, ‘Oscars’ and ‘Baftas’….there’s clearly more going on here than meets the eye. In all that flickering black and white there must be hallucinatory subliminal images embedded!”

So what is Damian O’Connor’s overall view of The Artist and the abundance of media hype surrounding it?

“How on earth did this travesty get all the publicity? If I wanted to go back in time, there are a zillion ‘black and whites’ that I could dust off and reminisce to, so spare me the hullabaloo for forcing this ridiculous contrived fake on us and all the fashionable bubble of puff it seems to have generated. Cinema is the world of illusion but this goes way beyond fantasy into being an absurd waste of good viewing time. I might as well be frank as there are those cinema goers who could be spared from wasting 100 precious minutes.”

Well his comments certainly left us in silence and he is not alone. Critic Devin Faraci – of ‘Badass Digest’ – expressed a similar view on Twitter last week. “People keep saying The Artist is charming. An end table is charming. A good movie should be something more.”

Have you seen The Artist? We invite debate on the film that has been described by some as ‘dismissible’ and ‘insufferable’, while others describe it as ‘witty and moving’ and look forward to hearing your opinions.

For your interest Damian O’Connor scored Iron Lady 8.5/10, Shame 6/10, J.Edgar 6./10 and War Horse 8/10.